Various types of hand-held cereal bars are known, as well as methods for their manufacture. For instance, cereal bars are known containing cereal dry mix ingredients which are held together by a binder system. Typical binder systems may contain corn syrups and other ingredients (i.e., sugar, fibers, etc). The binder system is commonly heated before it is added to the cereal mix to assist blending. The cereal/binder matrix has been sheeted or molded to form a layer before cooling and cutting steps. Normally, to achieve the required cohesion, the cereal matrix is compressed under rollers or other conventional cereal bar making equipment to form the bars.
The prior methods for making cereal bars have used significant compression during forming in order to deliver a bar with the required cohesion to hold together and provide a self-supporting cereal matrix. However, the amount of compression force used in the past has inordinately increased the bar density, and fractured cereal pieces at the surface thereof. The resulting cereal bar products had diminished quality texture and chewiness.
Methods are needed for making cereal bars which allow reductions in the compressive force required to form the bars while ensuring that adequate bar cohesion and desirable product texture is provided.